Mattarella's appeal for prisons: "Enough overcrowding and suicides, stop this social emergency"

Your functions are " a complex and articulated panorama. Functions that you carry out in accordance with the Constitution and that are not limited to surveillance. I know that every day you try to fulfill your commitment with sacrifice and professionalism: a commitment made even more difficult by the worrying conditions of the prison system that is marked by a serious and now unsustainable condition of overcrowding ." This was said by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella , meeting at the Quirinale with the Head of the Department of Penitentiary Administration and a representative of the Penitentiary Police.

For Mattarella, in prisons there is not only the problem of overcrowding , there is also the issue of " inadequate structural conditions in many institutions in which maintenance and restructuring interventions are necessary, interventions to be undertaken urgently in the awareness that space cannot be conceived only as a place of custody but must include environments intended for sociality, for activity, for the planning of treatment ".

“ Other difficulties weigh on your functions and call into question other institutions – continued the Head of State – : the lack of staff that has been in a critical situation for some time, the serious insufficiency of operators, from the number of educators to the difficult access to health care especially for prisoners suffering from mental health problems. Penal institutions must be equipped with new and more adequate professional skills otherwise your task would also be burdened ”.

“ Places of detention – explained the President of the Republic – must not be transformed into a training ground for new crimes, a training ground for crime, places of no hope but must be effectively aimed at the recovery of those who have made mistakes. Every recovered prisoner is equivalent to a security advantage for the community in addition to being a constitutional objective ”. For prisons, Mattarella reiterated, “ investments are needed in order to guarantee a dignified standard of living for prisoners and at the same time better working conditions that you carry out with scrupulousness. These are necessary and far-sighted investments. It is particularly important that the prison system has the necessary resources, human and financial, to ensure that each prisoner is treated based on custody rules based on current assessments, for each, with the objective for the future ”.

“ It is dramatic – concluded the President of the Republic – the problem of suicides in prisons that for too long has shown no signs of stopping: it is a real social emergency that we must question ourselves about in order to put an immediate end to all this. It must be done out of respect for the values ​​of the Constitution, out of respect for your work and the history of the penitentiary police .”

FROM

Web Editorial Team